We all made them... (hopefully we learned from our mistakes and no longer do them!)
Here are some of mine:
- Tanning - ill spent youth of spending hours sitting by the pool under the sun to get a golden brown. I never turned "golden", it was always grey and ashy or fried myself to a bright red and then peel.
- Not wearing sunscreen. See above. I never wore sunblock or sunscreen as a kid and there are pictures of me as a brown kid.
- Sleeping without washing off my make up. Being drunk or too sleepy are not good excuses anymore to not wash off your face after a night out. I always have face wipes nearby. Even if I didn't wear make up that day, the grime from the day is enough to clog pores and wake up with a huge zit.
- Over drying my oily acne-prone skin as a teen. I had pimples as a teen - yea, I used everything to zap them away. Salicylic acid, benzoyl peroxide, sulfur, willow bark, tea tree oil, clay, even toothpaste! I tried to de-grease and dry everything out. This was counter-productive because if you strip away oil from the skin, more oil is produced thus creating clogged pores that lead to zits. Thankfully, I know better and get regular facials that have paid off in the long term. I don't break out very often anymore.
- Not moisturizing. See above. Because I had the oily skin as a teen, I didn't feel the need to put a moisturizer on my face. If it weren't for good genes and good skincare routine, I would have dry irritable skin with some wrinkles.
- Dark black eyeliner all around my eyes. Panda eyes or Goth. I can't tell. Whoever said this was a good look growing up in the 90s needs to take a good look in the mirror. Dark black eyeliner lined on the upper lashes AND lower lashes closes the eyes instead of making them bigger. If the argument is that it makes the eyes more exotic or mysterious looking, it doesn't do either. Just makes you look a bit trashy or unaware that its not enhancing your best feature of your face. The eyes communicate a lot of nonverbal cues. Why would you want to mask it all with dark liner? There is a way to look smoldering with a nicely applied smokey eye and this is not it. But ugh, I am guilty for wearing this look as a pre-teen.
- Frosted lipstick/lip gloss. Another unfortunate case of the 90s trends. Just don't do it.
- Matching eyeshadow with my outfit. When I started wearing make up out into the real world, I was probably in the 6th grade and there were a couple school dances where I tried to match my eyeshadow to my outfit. Luckily, I caught on early that this was not a good look and quickly rectified the unfortunate beauty blunder early on.
- Over processed hair with hair dye, highlights, perms. Healthy hair comes from doing less to it. But we're all a bit vain and want our hair to always be something its not. So we put it through extreme heat (ie. curling, flatironing, blowdry, etc.), highlights, hair dye, perms, straightening. Just leave it alone. All of that fussing around to make our hair look different causes lots of damage to hair follicles and creates even more problems. I first had highlights in my hair in 8th grade and throughout high school. In college there were periods of experimenting with hair dye and I would dye my hair with manic panic maroon shades as well as different shades of blue. These weren't extreme because I have dark Asian hair so those colors only came out in the sun as tints or under certain lighting. Post-college, I stopped but started curling my hair a lot which fried the ends. I had a bit of highlights here and there and bleached the ends of my hair then had it dyed fire engine red. That lasted about a good month and a half then the color started to fade and it took two years of constant trimming and growing it out to get rid of all the color. My hair was healthy again until I moved to Asia. The heat and humidity would not hold a curl for very long so I got a perm, it didn't do anything so I got another one a couple months later, then my hair starting rebelling and falling out! So now, I'm on a mission to make my hair and scalp healthy again. I pour serums filled with the promise of hair regrowth onto my scalp and shampoos that promise to exfoliate and cleanse my scalp so the serums work better. *sigh*
